Molecular Therapy’s growing impact
Authors: Roland W. Herzog, Robert M. Frederickson
Journal: Molecular Therapy (2022)

Molecular Therapy has long been established as the leading journal of the gene and cell therapy community worldwide. Its comparatively broad scope of molecular and cellular therapies allowed the journal to cover the related areas of disease mechanisms and molecular underpinnings of disease and treatment. Last year, the journal for the first time reached an impact factor of greater than 10. This year, Molecular Therapy's impact factor further increased to 12.9. Establishment of an entire family of journals with a closely interacting editorial team further strengthened Molecular Therapy itself and, at the same time, allowed somewhat more specialized journals in the areas of nucleic acid therapy, methodology and clinical development, and cancer therapy to flourish, to distinguish themselves with excellent content, and to provide members of ASGCT and the broader gene and cell therapy community with ample opportunities to publish their work. A decade after the first papers appeared in Molecular Therapy – Nucleic Acids (MTNA, the first of the sibling journals), MTNA's impact factor reached 10 for the first time. Molecular Therapy – Methods and Clinical Development and Molecular Therapy – Oncolytics continue to have healthy impact factors of ∼6 (5.8 and 6.3, respectively). Molecular Therapy is now well positioned among other leading journals of biomedical research and therapeutics development, which is also reflected in high submission numbers and consequently the reduced acceptance rate of ∼10%. High selectivity allows the editors to focus on those articles of highest quality and general interest. Global appeal of our journal family also allows us to broaden even further the journals' scope without losing our historical focus on development of molecular and cellular therapeutics. Over the past year, special issues on mRNA technology, immune responses in gene therapy, and clinical gene and cell therapy had a very positive impact. In addition, much of the preclinical development of the original mRNA vaccine technology and of next-generation self-replicating RNA vaccines now in clinical trials appeared in our pages. Other areas that stood out include the role of cellular RNA in disease and development of new therapeutic targets (such as non-coding RNA and posttranscriptional modifications of RNA), viral vector development, and various aspects of cancer immunotherapy. The response to our calls for papers in the areas of gene editing and emerging infectious diseases was so great that Molecular Therapy dedicated two print issues each to these topics. Joint virtual issues bring together articles from all of our journals. This strategy will continue going forward, as special issues on extracellular vesicles, non-coding RNAs, and identification of novel disease markers and biomarkers are being developed through collaboration across the journal family. Molecular Therapy will continue to feature informative and, at times, provocative editorials and commentaries on new developments and emerging controversies in the field. Review articles will cover broadly interesting aspects of disease mechanisms as they relate to therapeutics development, and, building on last year's special issue, we will strive to feature clinical gene and cell therapy and related clinical research more prominently. While the gene therapy community continues to evolve, it is our hope that it is exactly this sense of community, combined with the quality and status of our journals, that compels authors to embrace Molecular Therapy as their top choice for submission of their strongest work.